Banksy’s 11 Most Complicated Works | Mental Floss Banksy’s 11 Most Complicated Works BanksyNY While Banksy is best known for his stencil-based, spray-painted wall pieces, the artist has continually mixed things up over the years, and he’s taken some big risks with different pieces. One of the first pieces of the “Better Out Than In” show also seems to be one of the most complicated, at least technically speaking, considering it involves a fully working waterfall that travels around the city in the back of a delivery truck. So far, it’s one of two moving trucks (and, yes, he’s even added his touch to stationary vehicles) that Banksy has included in this latest set of works, but its working water and over-the-top whimsy make it feel far more complicated than his cute/disturbing slaughterhouse truck, packed to the gills with mooing and cooing stuffed animals. 2. The Elephant in the Room Banksy.co.uk When Banksy hit Los Angeles back in 2006 for his first U.S. exhibition, he brought along traditional works, large-scale pieces, and a literal elephant to fill a room.

While it may have been amusing that Banksy titled his showing “Barely Legal,” it wasn’t so funny when U.S. officials deemed his painting of an actual, live elephant named Tai, done up in pink and gold paint to match the wallpaper of a room set-up, actually broke the law: Banksy had the proper permits to include Tai in the exhibition, but painting the pachyderm from trunk to toe was illegal (and quite time-consuming to complete in the first place). 3. Going to the Zoo Zoochat Plenty of Banksy pieces have been destroyed or removed, but two of his most ballsy are so hard to find pictures of that they seem more like myth than reality. Those two pieces—some of Banksy’s most dangerous, reckless, and illegal works—briefly had homes at the London Zoo and the Bristol Zoo. In animal enclosures. Which Banksy climbed into in order to tag them. We said “dangerous,” right? The London Zoo penguin enclosure was once home to swimming birds and 7-foot-high letters that read, “We’re bored of fish.” At Bristol, Banksy took to the elephant enclosure to write, "I want out. This place is too cold. Keeper smells.

Boring, boring, boring” on a wall. 4. The West Bank Getty Images In the late summer of 2005, Banksy took to the Israeli West Bank barrier to paint a staggering nine pieces on the wall that separates the country from the landlocked Palestinian territories. Banksy’s work on the Palestinian side is remarkable (and remarkably complicated) for a number of reasons: it’s a politically volatile area that is constantly patrolled, Banksy’s works there are massive, and the pieces all come with a very political bent (and a paradise-seeking theme). While the wall is home to plenty of other protest graffiti, Banksy’s work remains the most well known. 5. The Phone Box Artlet Blog When Banksy goes large-scale, he really goes large-scale. In 2006, the artist made a sculpture based on a classic red London phone box (paging Dr. Who), crumpled the thing up, rammed a pickaxe through it, made it look as if it was bleeding, and left it on a side street in the busy Soho section of London. How did he do it? How did no one see? How do you make a phone box sculpture? Who knows? 6.

Guantanamo Bay Comes to Disneyland WebUrbanist Banksy’s work has always come with political bite, but he took a real chomp out of international politics with a stunt he pulled at Disneyland back in September 2006. The artist snuck in an inflatable doll dressed like a Guantanamo Bay detainment camp prisoner (complete with an orange jumpsuit , black hood, and handcuffs), and then managed to blow up the thing and place it within the confines of the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad ride. The piece stayed up for over an hour, until the ride had to be shut down to remove it. Most people can’t even sneak outside drinks into Disneyland. 7. One Nation Under CCTV Getty Images Perhaps one of Banksy’s most recognizable pieces (though it’s since been removed), the artist took to a large London wall back in April of 2008 to paint his then-biggest work. A commentary on the UK’s widespread use of CCTV cameras to watch its populace, the building-sized piece read “ONE NATION UNDER CCTV,” and featured a depiction of both a child-sized artist and a watchful security guard. The amazing part?

Banksy had to scale a wall and erect scaffolding to paint the artwork—located right next to those omnipresent CCTV cameras, which failed to capture the artist. 8. Artworks in the Museum, New York Edition Wooster Collective In March of 2005, Banksy subverted the traditional means of getting his artwork into famous museums—he just posted them up himself. He hit four of New York City’s biggest art meccas—the Museum of Modern Art , the Metropolitan Museum of Art , the American Museum of Natural History , and the Brooklyn Museum —mounting up new pieces at each. Most of the pieces stayed up for an entire day before officials noticed that anything was amiss, even as museum patrons eyeballed works they knew weren’t exactly right. 9. Artworks in the Museum, London Edition Flickr user MichaelPickard Later that same year, Banksy took his museum-trolling gig back to London, turning his stunts in gallery 49 of the British Museum. There, he posted his version of a cave painting (a primitive hunter, pushing a shopping cart), complete with descriptive placard . Again, the artist added his own work to a famous museum without notice, and the piece stayed up for days. 10.

The Bristol Exhibition Getty Images Four years later, Banksy launched his biggest museum hoax to date—though his exhibition at the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery was actually sanctioned and commissioned by the museum. Still, only two officials knew about the installation, and Banksy and his team hit the space in the middle of the night to replace other artworks with a hundred of his own—from a massive truck installation to classic stencils, all the way down to a small, kitted out mouse placed in the museum’s natural history section. 11. Exit Through the Gift Shop While plenty of artists have made the leap from graphic arts to the big screen, Banksy’s unique film Exit Through the Gift Shop is an exceedingly bold, wacky, and complicated endeavor that stands out amongst its brethren. Sure, the film picked up an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature, but the tale of French street artist Thierry Guetta (aka Mr. Brainwash) and his wild ascent to the top tier of his profession is wickedly fun, possibly fake, and perhaps the best insight into who Banksy is yet.

The artist reportedly spent a year on editing alone, forced to sift through nearly 10,000 hours of footage shot by Guetta (most of it proving unusable). Of course, that seems complicated and hard enough—but when you consider the widely circulating theory that Banksy himself is Mr. Brainwash, the film itself seems like a bit of a miracle. The Story Behind Banksy | Arts & Culture | Smithsonian Contact Privacy Policy Terms of Use The Story Behind Banksy On his way to becoming an international icon, the subversive and secretive street artist turned the art world upside-down Banksy melds street-fighting passion and pacifist ardor in his image of a protester whose Molotov cocktail morphs into a bouquet. (Pixelbully / Alamy) By Will Ellsworth-Jones Smithsonian Magazine | Subscribe February 2013 When Time magazine selected the British artist Banksy—graffiti master, painter, activist, filmmaker and all-purpose provocateur—for its list of the world’s 100 most influential people in 2010, he found himself in the company of Barack Obama, Steve Jobs and Lady Gaga.

He supplied a picture of himself with a paper bag (recyclable, naturally) over his head. Most of his fans don’t really want to know who he is (and have loudly protested Fleet Street attempts to unmask him). But they do want to follow his upward tra­jectory from the outlaw spraying—or, as the argot has it, “bombing”—walls in Bristol, England, during the 1990s to the artist whose work commands hundreds of thousands of dollars in the auction houses of Britain and America. Today, he has bombed cities from Vienna to San Francisco, Barcelona to Paris and Detroit. And he has moved from graffiti on gritty urban walls to paint on canvas, conceptual sculpture and even film, with the guileful documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop, which was nominated for an Academy Award. Related Books Who Owns This Half-Million Dollar Banksy Mural? Pest Control, the tongue-in-cheek-titled organization set up by the artist to authenticate the real Banksy artwork, also protects him from prying outsiders. Hiding behind a paper bag, or, more commonly, e-mail, Banksy relentlessly controls his own narrative. His last face-to-face interview took place in 2003.

While he may shelter behind a concealed identity, he advocates a direct connection between an artist and his constituency. “There’s a whole new audience out there, and it’s never been easier to sell [one’s art],” Banksy has maintained. “You don’t have to go to college, drag ’round a portfolio, mail off transparencies to snooty galleries or sleep with someone powerful, all you need now is a few ideas and a broadband connection. This is the first time the essentially bourgeois world of art has belonged to the people. We need to make it count.” *** The Barton Hill district of Bristol in the 1980s was a scary part of town. Very white—probably no more than three black families had somehow ended up there—working-class, run-down and unwelcoming to strangers. So when Banksy, who came from a much leafier part of town, decided to go make his first foray there, he was nervous. “My dad was badly beaten up there as a kid,” he told fellow graffiti artist and author Felix Braun. He was trying out names at the time, sometimes signing himself Robin Banx, although this soon evolved into Banksy.

The shortened moniker may have demonstrated less of the gangsters’ “robbing banks” cachet, but it was more memorable—and easier to write on a wall. Around this time, he also settled on his distinctive stencil approach to graffiti. When he was 18, he once wrote, he was painting a train with a gang of mates when the British Transport Police showed up and everyone ran. “The rest of my mates made it to the car,” Banksy recalled, “and disappeared so I spent over an hour hidden under a dumper truck with engine oil leaking all over me. As I lay there listening to the cops on the tracks, I realized I had to cut my painting time in half or give it up altogether. I was staring straight up at the stenciled plate on the bottom of the fuel tank when I realized I could just copy that style and make each letter three feet high.” But he also told his friend, author Tristan Manco: “As soon as I cut my first stencil I could feel the power there. I also like the political edge. All graffiti is low-level dissent, but stencils have an extra history.

They’ve been used to start revolutions and to stop wars.” Longing and whimsy, innocence and experience, irreverence and wit, as well as a penchant for the purely zany, coexist in Banksy’s work. A girl releases a heart-shaped balloon, one in a series of similar motifs produced in locations worldwide. (Steve Cotton / Art of the State) Banksy melds street-fighting passion and pacifist ardor in his image of a protester whose Molotov cocktail morphs into a bouquet. (Pixelbully / Alamy) In London, a stenciled worker transmutes the no-parking lines he is painting into a stylized flower. (Matt Keeble / Alamy) Winston Churchill sports a mohawk. (Chris Jackson / Getty Images) In a piece of conceptual sculpture, an unsuspecting phone booth is felled by a vengeful pickax. (Steve Cotton / Art of the State) While skewering the art world’s pretensions, Banksy has maintained an activist’s belief in the power of images to effect change.

At a show in Bristol in 2009, he hung a painting with a hefty price tag, then inserted a howl protest—“You have got to be kidding me”—into the work. (Banksy) Elsewhere, pure fantasy reigns: an origami crane fishes from a riverbank. (AP Images) On the wall at the West Bank, he meditated on a power dynamic upended, as a child frisks a soldier. (Nick Fielding / Alamy) At a Bonham’s auction, rats merit unconditional love. (EPA / Facundo Arrizabalaga / Corbis) According to Banksy, "all graffiti is low-level dissent, but stencils have an extra history. They've been used to start revolutions and to stop wars." (Courtesy of banksy.co.uk ) Banksy has "bombed" cities from Vienna to San Francisco, Barcelona to Paris and Detroit. (Courtesy of banksy.co.uk ) Banksy's Australia. (Courtesy of banksy.co.uk ) Shopping cart by Banksy. (Courtesy of banksy.co.uk ) The people—and the apes and rats—Banksy drew in the early days have a strange, primitive feel to them.

(Courtesy of banksy.co.uk ) The people—and the apes and rats—he drew in these early days have a strange, primitive feel to them. My favorite is a piece that greets you when you enter the Pierced Up tattoo parlor in Bristol. The wall painting depicts giant wasps (with television sets strapped on as additional weapons) divebombing a tempting bunch of flowers in a vase. Parlor manager Maryanne Kemp recalls Banksy’s marathon painting session: “It was an all-nighter.” By 1999, he was headed to London. He was also beginning to retreat into anonymity. Evading the authorities was one explanation—Banksy “has issues with the cops.” But he also discovered that anonymity created its own invaluable buzz. As his street art appeared in cities across Britain, comparisons to Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring began circulating. Banksy’s first London exhibition, so to speak, took place in Rivington Street in 2001, when he and fellow street artists convened in a tunnel near a pub. “We hung up some decorators’ signs nicked off a building site,” he later wrote, “and painted the walls white wearing overalls.

We got the artwork up in 25 minutes and held an opening party later that week with beers and some hip-hop pumping out of the back of a Transit van. About 500 people turned up to an opening which had cost almost nothing to set up.” In July 2003, Banksy mounted “Turf War,” his breakthrough exhibition. Staged in a former warehouse in Hackney, the show dazzled the London art scene with its carnival-atmosphere display, which featured a live heifer, its hide embellished with a portrait of Andy Warhol, as well as Queen Elizabeth II in the guise of a chimpanzee. Late that year, a tall, bearded figure in a dark overcoat, scarf and floppy hat strolled into Tate Britain clutching a large paper bag. He made his way to Room 7 on the second level. He then dug out his own picture, an unsigned oil painting of a rural scene he had found in a London street market. Across the canvas, which he had titled Crimewatch UK Has Ruined the Countryside for All of Us, he had stenciled blue-and-white police crime-scene tape.

Single Page Previous Page 1 of 3 Next 1 2 3 Like this article? Banksy - Biography of a Graffiti Street Art Legend Other Works The name Banksy ignites controversy, starts conversations and piques curiosity. Banksy is undoubtedly the most controversial street artist to emerge on the global stage. The fact that his identity remains unknown after 20 years on the graffiti scene only adds to the intrigue that surrounds his work. The works of Banksy have appeared in America, Australia, Canada, England, France, Israel, Jamaica and Palestine. Wherever Banksy goes, he makes an impact. His pictorial and satirical messages cross the boundaries between art, philosophy, politics, sociology, humor and narcissism. Banksy is the godfather of a new form of pop art that originated on the street. He used a foundation created by peers to spread powerful messages using accessible street art. Anyone can see Banksy’s stencil art, which enables him to reach a large audience and to make strong statements. City officials have the power to paint over works or allow them to stay. Even when his ephemeral art is destroyed, it draws attention to political issues.

Such strong attention, that when most people visit our gallery of Banksy prints , it leads to hours of browsing. Code Name: Banksy Banksy’s Broom Rat by Infrogmation of New Orleans The works of Banksy are often inspired by other street art luminaries and classical artists. This is another controversial area. Banksy has credited 3D of the British band Massive Attack as a source of inspiration. However, connections to the French graffiti artist Blek le Rat , who is known as the Father of Stencil Graffiti, have caused much more commotion. Although Blek was initially pleased to inspire other artists, he has publicly challenged Banksy’s copycat style. On the other side, Banksy has said that every time he does something, he finds out that Blek Le Rat has done it twenty years earlier. Similarities between the rats pictured in Blek’s work show a distinct overlap. Whoever Banksy is, he has made an unforgettable impact on the world and experienced tremendous commercial success. As an unrivaled phenomenon, Banksy’s irreverent, socio-political style is paving the way for future street artists and perhaps changing the way that graffiti is seen.

Banksy may recycle old ideas, but he also inspires new creations from talented and not-so-talented artists. The recent commercial success of other street artists has been dubbed the “Banksy effect.” Who is Banksy? This is an inevitable question whenever Banksy is discussed. Although the street artist’s identity is technically unknown, there have been several theories as to who the mystery artist is. The most popular of these theories is that Banksy is a Bristol native named Robin Gunningham . The UK’s Daily Mail published an extensive piece on Gunningham where they interviewed schoolmates. A photograph showing a man believed to be Gunningham working on stencils in Jamaica is the lynchpin in this theory. The man that the Daily Mail spoke to said that Gunningham was one of three artistically inclined students in his class. According to this report, Gunningham attended the prestigious Bristol Cathedral Choir School, which has an annual tuition of £9,240. A neighbor told the Daily Mail that Banksy left school at 16 and began working in graffiti often traveling for months at a time and eventually leaving home altogether.

Journalist Simon Hattenstone of The Guardian newspaper is one of the only people who interviewed Banksy in person. He said that Banksy wore jeans and a T-shirt to the interview. Bansky was also sporting a silver tooth, a silver chain and one silver earring. If Banksy is Gunningham, which he has denied, he was born in 1973 and had surgery early in life to repair a cleft palate. Banksy also created a pseudo self-portrait that features a picture of Gunningham. Recent news reports have followed Mrs. Banksy, a political activist known as Joy Millward. According to anecdotal reports, the artist has successfully concealed his identity from his family and in-laws. The Early Years Banksy has been active on the graffiti scene since the early 1990s. He was first associated with a gang of underground street artists in Bristol who were known as the DryBreadZ Crew (DBZ). In Bristol, he partnered with Inkie and other notable artists who still work with Banksy. Based on personal comments, Banksy developed his stenciling technique after a brush with the law.

Banksy said he was 18 when he attempted to paint bubble letters on a public train. The police came, and everyone in his gang fled. Banksy ended up hiding under a garbage truck. While lying on the ground in a puddle of oil, Banksy contemplated ways to make the graffiti process faster. At that moment, he saw stenciled letters sprayed on the bottom of the truck, and his new style was born. By 2000, Banksy moved to London and stayed with friends Luke Egan and Jamie Eastman. Eastman worked at a record label that used several of Banksy’s illustrations. Banksy was reportedly staying in a flat in London’s Hackney neighborhood when numerous works of art began appearing in the area. While in London, Banksy’s work experienced a great deal of exposure and gained notoriety that led to a series of international exhibits. International Works Banksy’s first international exhibition entitled Existencilism was held in 2002 at L.A.’s 33? gallery. This was followed by a 2003 exhibit in London entitled Turf Wars, which was held at a secret location in an East London warehouse.

This controversial exhibit featured cattle painted with faces, arrows and a variety of commercial motifs. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) said the conditions were suitable, but animal activists ironically protested the exhibit that was ostensibly raising awareness about animal exploitation. Banksy’s “Show Me the Monet.” These popular exhibits were followed by a variety of subversive versions of popular paintings and a series of prints featuring Queen Victoria in an explicit position as a lesbian. Christina Aguilera purchased the original Queen Victoria print for £25,000. Banksy’s subversive works include variations of paintings by Andy Warhol , Monet, Edward Hopper and Leonardo da Vinci. Banksy has a unique way of satirizing the works of the great masters while paying homage to their acclaimed pieces. Between 2003 and 2004, Banksy completed an exhibit in the Alexandria suburb of Sydney that was attended by 1,500 people. By 2004, Banksy was producing a number of new works for future exhibits. The most famous in this era was his spoof on the British £10 note, which features the head of Princess Diana.

The notes also featured altered text that read Banksy of England instead of Bank of England. Banksy of England £10 Notes These notes were distributed at the Notting Hill Carnival and at the Reading Festival. While some tried to spend them at local shops, a few of the notes have sold for £200 on eBay. Several limited-edition posters featuring 10 uncut notes sold for £100 on the anniversary of Diana’s death. Several years later, the Bonhams auction house sold one of the posters for £24,000. The Big Time Bethlehem Wall Graffiti by Pawel Ryszawa By 2006, Banksy was a fringe street artist who had reached the big time in a big way. In 2005, Banksy traveled to Palestine and the West Bank where he stenciled nine images on the Bethlehem Wall. These works show children digging and playing near the wall, an armored dove with an olive branch, a girl frisking a soldier, a ladder ascending the wall, a girl floating over the wall with balloons and several other pieces. This groundbreaking series led to a second exhibit in Los Angeles entitled Barely Legal.

This three-day exhibit featured a variety of vandalized art and a pink “elephant in the room,” which symbolizes the ever-present issue of world poverty. The elephant featured a flashy Indo-style print with gold motifs set over the elephant’s painted skin. Elephant in the Room At the same time, Banksy was crafting a series of prints featuring British model Kate Moss. These silkscreen prints done in the style of Andy Warhol sold at Sotheby’s for £50,400, which was five times the estimate. During the same auction, a stencil of the Mona Lisa with paint dripping from her eyes sold for a record-setting £57,600. These groundbreaking sales turned Banksy from an outsider into a commercial success. Banksy at Auction Due to demand, a number of Banksy’s works sold for prices that exceeded all expectations. Bombing Middle England sold for £102,000, Balloon Girl sold for £37,200, and Bomb Hugger sold for £31,200. Several other works received incredible amounts.

Ballerina with Action Man Parts sold for £96,000, Glory sold for £72,000, and Untitled (2004) sold for £33,600. In 2007, a new record for Banksy pieces was set when Space Girl & Bird sold for £288,000 at Bonhams of London. The various mediums that Banksy uses make it difficult to preserve his pieces and to market them, but this hasn’t stopped people from trying. In 2007, a Bristol couple attempted to sell their home, which featured a prominent Banksy mural. Although offers fell through due to logistics, the couple is marketing the property as a mural with a house attached. In Norfolk, a couple listed a mobile home that Banksy doodled on a decade earlier for £500,000. According to reports, the couple purchased the home for £1,000, which would be quite a profitable investment. Whether Banksy is pleased with the profits remains a mystery.

In a post on his website, the artist featured a picture of auction attendees with the caption “I can’t believe you morons buy this sh**!” Major Installations Banksy’s Stonehenge by Rodw Bored by his success, Banksy embarked on a new mission to organize collective exhibits and major installations. The most famous of these was Banksy’s Stonehenge. This monumental installation featured at the Glastonbury Festival was built entirely from portable toilets in an archetypically Banksy manner. One of Banksy’s most iconic works is a crumpled phone booth that is lying on its side, stabbed with an ax and dripping blood. This installation appeared on a Soho street in 2006 and was quickly removed by Westminster officials. Banksy’s Crumpled Phone Booth In May 2008, Banksy organized the Cans Festival, a street-art pun on France’s famous Cannes Film Festival. This event was held in an abandoned tunnel and featured 39 international street artists, including Mr. Brainwash , Blek le Rat, Jef Aéroso and many others. After the Cans Festival, he put together his first official exhibition in New York.

Opening in early October, the Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill exhibit featured a variety of animatronic pets, including a rabbit applying makeup and a mother hen tending her McNugget babies as they pecked at a container of barbecue sauce. More International Appearances Rocking Chair Man by Infrogmation of New Orleans While visiting the states, Banksy embarked on a stenciling tour of hurricane-ravaged New Orleans that included his signature rats and a variety of human figures. Taking advantage of derelict buildings in the Lower 9th Ward, Banksy stenciled looters entering windows and a boy swinging on a rescue tube. He also stenciled a man in a rocking chair under a no loitering sign, and he painted a hooded KKK member hanging from a noose. This final work was quickly covered. Success or Bust – Has Banksy been Arrested? Always upping the ante, Banksy is breaking boundaries and taking street art to places where it has never been. In 2009, the Banksy vs. Bristol Museum show opened at the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery in his purported hometown.

The show featured 100 unique pieces, including animatronic displays and large installations. More than 300,000 visitors attended the exhibition. During his career, Banksy’s work has made many controversial appearances. In 2005, he placed subverted paintings in several prominent New York museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, The Met, the Brooklyn Museum and the American Museum of Natural History. He also hung a primitive a cave painting depicting hunter-gatherers pushing a shopping cart in the British Museum of London. This piece was promptly destroyed. In 2006, Banksy replaced 500 copies of Paris Hilton’s first CD with a mix of Danger Mouse songs and his own digitally altered cover art. The tracks included “Why Am I Famous?” and “What Have I Done?” Only a few copies were sold before workers pulled the items. Copies of the altered CDs have sold for £750 online. The same year, Bansky placed an inflatable doll dressed as a Guantanamo prisoner in California’s Disneyland theme park. Banksy’s stencil art has appeared at the Bristol Zoo and the London Zoo where he printed animals’ thoughts.

He also created a series of pieces commemorating the 2012 London Olympics. These works include a pole vaulter jumping over barbed wire and landing on an abandoned mattress. Another stenciled image featured a javelin thrower aiming a surface missile. This was designed to highlight a military installation that was defending the site. Keep it, or Clean it? Despite Banksy’s status, city officials, property owners and fellow street artists have destroyed his work. One piece in Melbourne, Australia, was protected by Plexiglas, but a group of artists managed to pour silver paint behind the sheet, which completely obliterated the image. Banksy created seven pieces in Toronto, but most of the images were destroyed. In Detroit, an art group excavated a piece of Banksy’s work for preservation. Even in Banksy’s home country, officials struggle to cover up the stencils as quickly as he makes them. However, there have been several instances of inadvertent destruction. A Muslim community center painted over an image on the side of their new building, and a team of plumbers in Australia accidentally destroyed a parachuting rat that was applied in the late 1990s.

Other Works In addition to his status as an acclaimed artist, Banksy is a successful author and filmmaker. His 2010 film “ Exit Through the Gift Shop ,” which featured Mr. Brainwash, was nominated for an Oscar. Before the premier at the Sundance Film Festival, he created 10 pieces of street art in Park City and Salt Lake City, Utah, to promote the premier. To date, Banksy has published six books featuring his art and opinions. Wall and Piece was published by Random House in 2005, and Banksy: “You Are an Acceptable Level of Threat” was released in 2012. Although critics say that Banksy is merely a vandal and his work is dazzlingly clever to idiots, his fame is undeniable. Virtually every aspect of Banksy’s work is controversial, and perhaps that is the secret behind his success. Who Is Banksy? | The Huffington Post Mallika Rao Arts Reporter, The Huffington Post Jim Dyson via Getty Images One afternoon in 2006, a Frenchman and a guy who looked like a plumber drove up to a warehouse at the end of a quiet commercial street east of downtown Los Angeles.

The Frenchman was Thierry Guetta, aka Mr. Brainwash, an eccentric filmmaker who frequently collaborates with the elusive British street artist known as Banksy. The other man -- the plumber type -- was Banksy himself. So starts the juiciest personal story in the repertoire of Joel Unangst, the owner of the warehouse he said Banksy and Guetta drove up to that day. The two men were scouting a site for “Barely Legal,” Banksy’s first American art show, which notoriously featured an illegal painted elephant , and would prove instrumental to the artist's rise. The deal went through. True to form, Banksy liked the building for its "remote" location on a dead end street, Unangst told The Huffington Post. For his part, Unangst said he had no sense that the ordinary-looking Brit he was signing up would become one of the world's most famous artists. It may be hard to imagine Banksy as a nobody, as his high-stakes, much-covered New York City residency, “ Better Out Than In ,” comes to a close Thursday.

For the past month, the famed prankster has played a cat-and-mouse game with the NYPD, dropping public artworks daily -- some simple (the classic black-and-white Banksy stencil), some staggeringly elaborate (a slaughterhouse truck packed with stuffed animals, in protest of factory farming, titled "Sirens of the Lambs" ). He’s managed to criticize the obvious targets along the way -- McDonald’s, the art world, the new World Trade Center -- and rankle Mayor Michael Bloomberg. A spray-painted wall attributed to Banksy in Williamsburg, whose owners have hired security guards to protect it. But bigger than all those triumphs is that he wasn’t caught. Throughout the monthlong residency, Banksy’s secrets were kept -- his location, his given name, his cell phone number. Anonymity is crucial to his operation. It keeps him out of jail, and sustains, as he put it in a New Yorker article “the element of surprise” his fans love. He hasn’t always succeeded.

An article published on the Daily Mail on July 12, 2008, features the below photo of a man, underneath which the caption reads: "In the frame: The man in this photograph, taken in Jamaica four years ago, is believed to be Banksy." Unangst said these are the real deal. “There’s pictures of him at the Daily Mail,” he said. Among the street artist community, though, there’s a silent agreement not to squeal. “A lot of people know who Banksy is. A lot of street artists,” said Steven P. Harrington, co-founder of the popular blog BrooklynStreetArt. “I think that’s part of the fun of the street. People don’t talk. To me, that more or less proves the kind of respect he has on the streets. If you wanted to damage his brand, the first thing you’d do is expose him.” Banksy wasn’t exactly welcomed by his American colleagues.

The “clannish” nature of the street art community made for “xenophobic comments,” Harrington said, “about this British guy coming over here to New York.” But “as far as codes go, it’s ‘Don’t rat,’” said Bishop203, owner of Low Brow Artique, a graffiti supply store in Brooklyn. Bishop, himself an anonymous artist, said Banksy “haters” sounded off in his store all month, but there was never even a wishful allusion to outing the artist. “What’s the point?” said Yoav Litvin, a New York-based photographer who writes about street art. “Your reputation would be destroyed. Street art is a lot about respect.” Respecting Banksy occasionally backfires. The story goes that a few months ago, an artist uploaded a picture to Instagram of himself and another man, captioned “me and my boy, Banksy,” according to Bishop. The idea, Bishop suggests, was to show off. But the peacocking apparently had the opposite effect. “Every other graffiti writer verbally destroyed him, until he finally took it down very quickly,” Bishop said.

Conspiracy theorists point to the aura of protection around Banksy as confirmation of a much-espoused rumor: that he doesn’t actually exist. James Top, a member of New York’s first generation of graffiti artists, subscribes to this explanation. He said he believes Banksy to be an invention of “powerful and wealthy” art world players who’ve discovered how to reliably turn a buck -- by making and selling work as “this mythical Banksy person.” To Top, a scheme headed by an imaginary mascot seems less farfetched than an all-powerful code. One of Banksy's stealthiest acts during his New York residency -- a landscape donated to a Housing Works shop, with a Nazi figure painted into it. “Some of his friends must be in difficult financial situations," Top said. "If someone needed $15,000 to save his home versus protect Banksy’s image, you’re telling me he wouldn’t be willing to sell a picture of Banksy here in New York?” Unangst, who swears Banksy is real, said the answer is simple: “If you want to be cool with Banksy, you don’t really talk about him.” He learned that lesson the hard way.

Unangst was a prime source in the 2007 New Yorker investigation, an expert on what writer Lauren Collins called “ the nearly unprecedented experience of meeting Banksy .” Unangst’s revelations weren’t explosive. Banksy is “a genius and a madman,” he said, “like everybody, but ... like nobody.” Some details were clearer, like Banksy’s penchant for paint-smudged T-shirts. Unangst said he was asked to use a generic male name when talking to him. But nothing was damning -- there were no birth names confirmed, or covert photographs sold to the magazine. Still, there was a “fallout,” Unangst said, adding that he’s no longer in touch with Banksy or his team. He remains a fan. "Better Out Than In" has compelled him for its sheer scope. Unangst hypothesizes that the crew of 15 or so Englishman he met in 2006 has blossomed into more. Banksy -- who he said was “very good at cutting stencils,” and “paranoid” about being outed -- may well be sitting in the shadows while his army of “art warriors” execute the plans out on the street.

As for why no one in Banksy’s inner circle has gone soft and run to the tabloids, Unangst has a simple theory: “Even they don’t want to be photographed.” CORRECTION: A previous version of this story misidentified the co-founder of the blog Brooklyn Street Art as Stephen Powers, instead of Steven D. Harrington. Mr. Powers is a well-known street artist, but not the right man. Banksy In NYC Who is He? About Banksy: Famously Anonymous Street Artist | Urbanist Who is He? About Banksy: Famously Anonymous Street Artist Article by Delana , filed under Street Art & Graffiti in the Art category The life of the street artist is, by necessity, one of anonymity. In many of the world’s cities, the most noticeable and breathtaking pieces of art aren’t created by world-renowned talents. They are created by the unknown street artist under cover of darkness. We never see them and they are known only by their tagging pseudonyms. This is part one of our complete eight-part guide to Banksy Art and Graffiti .. UK-based street artist Banksy is a notable half-exception to this rule. His work is currently seen around the planet.

There are few in the art world (street or otherwise) who don’t know his signature style. The exception, though, is that no one is sure just who he is. There have been many claims to know his true identity but none have ever been definitive to date. Who is Banksy? We may not know his real name, but his art is unmistakably the work of a passionate individual. So what do we know about Banksy? His paintings, stencils, and other art pieces frequently address serious social issues. He takes on capitalism, war, poverty, and governments with grace. His work often displays a keen sense of humor, making it equally possible that you will laugh or cast your eyes down thoughtfully upon seeing a Banksy piece. And although the pseudonym and the signature style of the artist are well known, there’s not much else that we know for sure about Banksy. A few tidbits of information are widely accepted: he is from Bristol, UK, and got involved in graffiti art sometime in the early 90s. He began to gain widespread notoriety around 2003. He was born in or around 1974 and sports a silver tooth.

He is, according to the few people who have met him as Banksy, an unassuming and typical-looking man. His refusal to be interviewed in person or even to reveal his real name has added to his mystique over the years. In the UK (and, increasingly, in other parts of the world) Banksy-spotters claim to know the artist’s real identity on a fairly regular basis. Although he’s been caught on CCTV a few times, he is clever enough to keep his identity a mystery. There is good reason for leaving us guessing about Banksy. Banksy’s work has been equated with vandalism on several occasions, and many have called for his prosecution. His choice of subject matter coupled with his medium (typically spray paint on public walls) ruffles feathers no matter where he is (or who he is). Banksy’s talents aren’t limited to paint and the occasional pencil drawing. He has been responsible for a number of social commentaries involving replacing hundreds of Paris Hilton CDs with CDs of his own creation. He has sneaked his own work into several art museums, including a prehistoric-looking piece at the British Museum which the museum decided to add to their own permanent collection.

Just as controversial as his methods is Banksy’s take on the art world at large. He has been known to deride other artists for their self-importance and “inferior” art forms. He has even taken on the people who buy his art. Following a 2006 Sotheby’s auction of several of his works, he produced an illustration of an auction on his official website featuring the words “I can’t believe you morons actually buy this shit.” He is a vocal opponent of the organized art world, though he now produces some work that is more conventional than his street art roots. Banksy’s work is applauded by many, but some critics say that it oversimplifies issues to appeal to the masses. Other critics – most notably, representatives from Keep Britain Tidy – believe that Banksy’s street art is a crime and that he is setting a negative example for other would-be graffiti artists. Through his talent and his dedication to art and his personal statements, Banksy has become perhaps the most famous anonymous artist ever . We still don’t know his true identity or where he will pop up next, but just mentioning his pseudonym brings a look of recognition to the faces of anyone who knows anything about art.

Love him or hate him, Banksy is without a doubt one of the most influential artists working today. He has affected the art world from Australia to the US and nearly everywhere in between. Over the next few weeks, we’ll take a closer look at Banksy’s work, his influence, and the grand mystery surrounding everything he does. BBC - iWonder - How did Banksy become the world's most famous vandal? How did Banksy become the world's most famous vandal? 1992 Consultant Dr Luke Dickens Open University The writing on the wall Banksy is the most well known graffiti artist in the world, even though he has never revealed his true identity. Quirky and political, his work has satirised oppression in Palestine, hypocrisy in politics and capitalist greed in London. His spray-painted images are illegal but still create newspaper headlines and sell for six figure sums in galleries around the world. How has the world's most famous vandal become the darling of the art scene? 1992 Spray can art in Bristol Luke Dickens Banksy’s home city of Bristol has enjoyed a vibrant history of graffiti writing. As a teenager he began doing graffiti in his home town, Bristol, as part of the DryBreadZ Crew.

He adopted the name ‘Banksy’ to protect his identity. Choosing a tag or graffiti name was common in this subculture to brand work and to avoid arrest. This is the name that he has stuck with since. The Bristol street artists adopted graffiti-style pseudonyms and painted in collaborative groups or ‘crews’. His earliest influence was musician and graffiti writer 3D, one of the pioneers who brought free-hand, spraycan-style graffiti writing to the UK from the New York subways. Mid 1990s Early influences: The role of the Rat Otherwise known as Xavier Prou, Blek le Rat began painting rats on the walls of Paris in the 1980s. His style developed through the influence of a French graffiti artist Blek le Rat – particularly his visual style and political messaging. Rather than using a free-hand painting style like most graffiti writers, Blek used stencils to create images. Banksy adopted this technique for practical reasons: “I was quite crap with a spray can, so I started cutting out stencils instead.” Blek influenced Banksy and inspired him to develop the anti-establishment views he grew up with in Bristol.

Armed with a new visual style, Banksy pursued more political targets with his work. Stencil work in Bristol Getty images Banksy's Mild Mild West, dating to this period, referenced the riots that struck the city in 1992. This new stencil based style began appearing in his home city of Bristol. His political views also came to the fore. Witty and subversive, these new Banksy works targeted political hypocrisy and social injustice. In a 2001 Herald Scotland interview he summed it up: “There is a side of my work that wants to crush the whole system, leaving a trail of the blue and lifeless corpses of judges and coppers in my wake, dragging the city to its knees as it screams my name. Then there is the other darker side.” Urban exhibitions AP A Banksy work at the Cans Festival in a disused tunnel on Leake Street, London, 2008. By now the biggest name of the British graffiti scene, Banksy expanded his sights and targeted the art world as his next venture. Shunning traditional galleries, Banksy hosted exhibitions of street art in unusual locations such as abandoned tunnels.

Harking back to Blek le Rat’s attacks graffiti attacks on the Paris art world, Banksy took art out of what he saw as stuffy galleries and into the forgotten, seedy places that the art world ignored. “When you go to an art gallery you are simply a tourist looking at the trophy cabinet of a few millionaires.” Banksy wanted art to be available to everyone. Big business and celebrity buyers You need to have JavaScript enabled to view this clip. Not every Banksy can be found on the street. Some are found in galleries. Clip: The Culture Show. By the mid 2000s, Banksy was becoming a celebrity and his work was selling for huge amounts of money. By 2008, despite the global financial crash, a Banksy 'vandalised' version of a Damien Hirst painting sold for over $1.8m. High profile art collectors and celebrities spend thousands to own a Banksy. Among the rich and famous, designer Paul Smith, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are known to be Banksy collectors. After claims that his success meant that he had sold out, Banksy said: “I love the way capitalism finds a place – even for its enemies.

It’s boom time in the discontent industry.” Art versus graffiti: The King Robbo war Bottom image: Getty Images The site of the turf war was by a canal in Camden. Banksy struck first (top image) before Robbo's team responded (bottom). However, not everyone was happy with Banksy's popularity when he became involved in a public row with another graffiti writer called King Robbo. As the feud developed, Banksy painted over work by King Robbo, one of London’s earliest graffiti writers. Painting over the work of a fellow graffiti writer was seen as unforgivable and Robbo’s crew responded by defacing the new Banksy. A tit-for-tat war ensued – even continuing after Robbo’s untimely death - as his crew continued to target Banksy works across the capital. Robbo’s largely urban, underground, working class team saw Banksy as a mainstream, middle class imposter. April 2014 Who actually owns a Banksy? Bristol's Broad Plain Boys Club originally moved the Banksy indoors and charged members of the public to view it. Banksy's work was now so popular that councils began to see them not as annoying vandalism but as a money spinning opportunity.

A Banksy called Mobile Lovers appeared on the door of a cash-strapped Bristol boys’ club. A row broke out when the council claimed ownership. Banksy intervened when he wrote to the club to support their claim and the club later sold the door for £400,000 which saved it from closure. Bansky's art can now cause tension when it appears in communities as locals see them as gifts to their area – if anyone should profit from selling a Banksy it should be them. Vandalising Banksy Getty Images First appearing in Cheltenham in April 2014, Spy Booth was vandalised in August of the same year. Banksy's works, such as the surveillance spoof Spy Booth, are now being targeted by a new generation of rival graffiti artists. He has become a brand in himself and for some younger graffiti writers Banksy is fair game. The mischievous, anonymous outsider taking shots at the establishment is now a part of Britain's art scene. Councils are quick to restore and protect works that previously they would have scrubbed away as vandalism. He has kept his identity secret for years and built a cult around his name.

He still manages to walk the tightrope between maverick and mainstream but how long can he maintain that position?

Question: What type of art is Banksy famous for?
Answer: GRAFFITI ART